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Vishal Bali, group CEO of Fortis Healthcare Ltd, one of the largest hospital chains in the country, is stepping down to pursue his own entrepreneurial venture, the company informed the stock exchange on Thursday morning.

Bali will stay with the company till the end of March 2014 to enable a smooth transition, a company release stated.

“After having spent nearly two-and-a-half decades in the sector, I desire to do something new and entrepreneurial in healthcare,” Bali said.

Prior to joining Fortis, Bali was CEO of Wockhardt Hospitals Group, where he had spent around 19 years. Fortis had acquired close to a dozen hospitals from Wockhardt in 2009.

The company said that going forward Bali’s responsibilities will be shared by Fortis’ co-promoter Shivinder Singh and Aditya Vij who is Fortis CEO-India.

Fortis Healthcare encompasses various verticals in healthcare, including primary care, diagnostics and hospitals. The company provides healthcare delivery services in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Dubai and Sri Lanka. The firm recently initiated a process whereby it took a u-turn from its previous strategy of going international, by selling two of its largest overseas healthcare assets in Vietnam and Australia.

The assets were purchased by Fortis from a privately held firm of the promoters. The promoters in turn lent money to Fortis to buy the assets which had piled up debt on its books. Fortis recently raised capital from IFC, StanChart PE and others to retire debt.